


what the water gave me

by softbruise



Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-10 17:49:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4401500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softbruise/pseuds/softbruise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And the wind picks up and there is salt in her hair and on her tongue and she watches the greenwitch fall into the sea and thinks, perhaps, she hears something say, very softly, <i>Jane.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	what the water gave me

**Author's Note:**

> this is entirely eleanor's fault.

She breathes in. Seven years old, on the edge of the water, air salty and hair windswept. Barney holds hands with their parents, swinging from their arms, laughing. The waves brush her toes, and she doesn’t flinch back. She is too small for this beach, this arching sky and aching sea. 

 

A step forward. A whisper. She strains to hear. 

 

Another step. _Jane._ The icy Cornwall water laps at her ankles. 

 

Another step. _Jane. Jane…_ Up to her knees and the hem of her new dress is wet, the wind and spray in her eyes. It stings with salt and all things living. _Jane_. 

 

Another step. _Come, Jane._ Waist-deep, her legs submerged, her dress floating about her thighs like a mermaid’s tail. The sky is stormy but she doesn’t look up. The sea is wilder still. 

 

Another step. Almost…

 

A shout. “Jane!” _Jane._ “Jane, come back here!” _Come, Jane._ “Jane!”

 

Strong arms sweep her up, and she makes a small sound in the back of her throat as the saltwater drips down her legs and she leaves the sea behind. As her mother carries her back to the sand with sharp words, she strains her ears, and there - on the edge of the ocean: _Jane._

  


***

  


She breathes in. Older, this time, but young still. Upon the clifftop, willow and the scent of sap and salt and life, and a whisper that feels familiar and so, so sad. 

 

“You get a wish,” they tell her matter-of-factly, and she runs a hand down the slender bones and bites her lip. She can hear the sea singing, she can hear the rolling waves. Something passes between her hand and the willow, something old and new all at once. A new sadness, an old melancholy. The sting of birth, the slow and lonely pang of death.

 

 _I wish,_ she thinks. _I wish…_

_Oh, I wish you could be happy._

 

And the wind picks up and there is salt in her hair and on her tongue and she watches the greenwitch fall into the sea and thinks, perhaps, she hears something say, very softly, _Jane._

  


***

  


She breathes in. Twenty years old. No air this time. No salt breeze. Only pressure, and loss. She presses her hands to her stomach in the full sea and thinks, _no. No, I will not leave this be._ Her hair swirls above her.

 

The ocean still moves down here, eddies and currents and things that shift in her muscles. No mother this time to hold her back as the sea closes its mouth over her and swallows. Nothing to wish for this time, no greenwitch to give her what she seeks. And that memory, too, feels emptied: she knows that she touched those yellowing bones, knows she watched them fall - but there was something _else -_

 

She lets her fingers move, uselessly, in front of her, sketching the shapes of all the things she does not remember. 

 

Stood lonely and dark against Trewissick, she almost hadn’t dared. There had been no mother, yes - but, too, there had been no whisper. No soft-spoken _Jane_ , no wave she could try to shift into her name under the cover of the wind. 

 

And yet. And yet she had been so _sure_. 

 

And so she had taken a step, and another, and another. Cold, past knees and thighs and waist and shoulders. Past neck and mouth and nose and then - she had kept going. Had opened her mouth and _breathed._

 

And at last, now, she hears it. _Jane._ It’s louder now than it was before, louder than she had thought possible. It drums in her ears and it thrums in her chest and she shudders and suddenly, suddenly, she knows a name. As if she has always known it.

 

“Tethys?”

 

_Jane._

 

And then, neither soft nor harsh, Tethys becomes. It is not sudden, or quick, or slow. It simply is. It always was.

 

 _Jane Drew,_ she says. _You have come for what was taken from you._

 

“Yes,” she answers. “I suppose. Only, you see, I don’t exactly know what it is.”

 

A brief, rolling movement that might be a laugh. _No. That was its nature._ A pause. _You are afraid._

 

“Yes. Very much so.” It is shaky. It is something real, here. She thinks that holds weight.

 

 _And you miss it. Knowing what it is you are afraid of._ Tethys speaks the words as if she understands. 

 

“A - a Lady,” Jane says. “There was a Lady. She called me… Juno. And something about the greenwitch -- something --”

 

 _My daughter._ Tethys shifts in herself, and there is peace in the movement. _Yes._

 

“Can you give it back?”

 

 _It is not a question of_ can. _There is weight to be born, and pain, and someone must bear it. The sea has broad shoulders. Would you be the one?_

 

She hesitates. Thinks of the hollowness in her chest, in her thoughts, of the look in Gumerry’s eyes sometimes. Feels her own breathing like a moth under a glass. Like a girl in the sea. 

 

“It - would be heavy.”

 

_Yes._

 

“I would be - alone.”

 

_Perhaps._

 

“Yes,” she says, and then it is suddenly imperative that she make herself clear. “ _Yes._ I want it.”  
Another roll, but less laughter. A shrug, she thinks, insofar as the sea communicates apathy. 

 

_Then have it you shall._

And as Tethys had, it becomes. There is no flowering of knowledge, no revelation. It is more like an unveiling - but she marvels now that the veil was ever there. And she grows and grows, under the weight of it, and the sea roils beneath her. 

_There is so much more than I knew,_ she thinks, and Tethys places her upon the shore with care, hands gentle. _I am so much more._


End file.
